To Have Him and Hold Him by Kieran Frank

That, in the end, was the biggest driver of his departure. They set up structures to push their top players, to get them together as full timers.” “But Georgia and Romania have gone past us. “We’ve made a lot of progress, like the CRC, that’s been a massive improvement for player preparation. “We haven’t made enough changes to keep up,” he said. By Remembrance Day 2013, Canada was down to 15th, two years later, after the disappointment of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, Canada stands 18th.Īs he said last fall, the lack of high level fifteens exposure for many of his key players was the root for those failures. But a year later, a slide had become, one Crowley and his coaching team couldn’t reverse.

A year later they were still in the same spot. Crowley believed – and his players did too – that they were better at the end than they were at the beginning.įollowing the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Canada sat 13th in the world, a tick behind Italy. Over the years, players have said his sessions were some of the best they’d ever been through. He kept planning engaging sessions for his players, ones which would be valuable for all his players, be they from the professional ranks or not. His contract wasn’t renewed after the 2007 Rugby World Cup and the Rugby Canada board of the day decided to look elsewhere.Įven so, he was committed to the task at hand: making his team better, ready to take on the world’s best when the chance came, ready to snatch some wins which he believed were there for the taking. The Canadians saw more games than ever before, but the results remained middling.

Suggitt’s period in charge saw many holdovers from the Clark era, with a sprinkling of younger players. His time in charge was a tumultuous one off the field, with Rugby Canada eventually transitioning into the operation it is today, with a much larger professional staff than had been the case at the turn of this century.

Suggitt’s predecessor, the Australian David Clark, had been recruited from abroad, but he’d also been handed a dual job coaching a centralized development team, first known as CCSD and eventually as the Pacific Pride. The head coach had almost always been drawn from a domestic source. The jump in 2008 to Rugby Canada, to replace Ric Suggitt following the 2007 Rugby World Cup, was a shift in gears for Rugby Canada. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.

To Have Him and Hold Him by Kieran Frank